Ken Ford

Erwin Rommel, med tilnavnet "Ørkenreven", er en av andre verdenskrig mest kjente feltmarskalker. Hans krig i Nord-Afrika pågikk i over to år der han både vant og tapte store slag. Et av de mest kjente slagene er ved El Alamein i 1942 og i Kasseringspasset i 1943.

Erwin Rommel er en av andre verdenskrigs mest kjente feltmarskalker. Hans krig i Nord-Afrika pågikk i over to år der han både vant og tapte store slag. Et av de meste kjente slagene er ved El Alamein i 1942 og i Kasserinepasset i 1943. Rommels erkefiende var den britiske general Bernard Law Montgomery, som var sjefen for den britiske 8. armé i Afrika. De to kamphanene kjempet mot hverandre i den ugjestmilde ørkenen i Nord-Afrika, men de kjempet også mot vanskelige forsyningsforhold, ekstrem varme, sandstormer og ørkensand. Med slagene ved El Alamein og sluttkampene ved Kasserinepasset i 1943 setter vi i denne boken fokus på de harde kampene tyskerne og italierne utkjempet mot de overlegne britiske og amerikanske styrkene i Nord-Afrika.

The life of one insignificant, poor argricultural worker in Victorian Hampshire, who has at last found a place in history. His words have come down through the centuries to show how the poor lived in rural England in the nineteenth century..

In February 1942, three of the major ships of the German surface fleet – the battle-cruisers Scharnhorst and Gneisenau, and the heavy cruiser Prinz Eugen – stormed out of the harbour at Brest on a dramatic voyage back to Germany. Passing through the straights of Dover, the ships faced everything the Royal Air Force and the Royal Navy could throw at them. In a dramatic running fight, the ships managed to sail right under the nose of history's greatest maritime nation to reach the safety of Germany. The brilliantly executed operation brought great humiliation to the British – Hitler, who had developed the plan, had judged perfectly the reaction of the British command to the Channel Dash. This book tells the complete story of this great race, from the planning through to the repercussions of this unique Germany victory.

Operation Archery, the raid on Vaagso and Maaloy in Norway on 27 December 1941, was the first true combined operation carried out by British forces involving the Army, Royal Navy and the Royal Air Force. The Islands of Vaagso and Maaloy on the Norwegian coast between Bergen and Trondheim, were selected because they offered a perfect opportunity to damage German installations and morale. Mountbatten, the new head of Combined Operations, hoped to eliminate the local garrison, destroy the fish oil factories and sink enemy shipping. The raiding force consisted of No. 3 Commando, two troops of No. 2 Commando, a medical detachment from No. 4 Commando and a Royal Norwegian Army detachment totalling 51 officers and 525 men. To support the amphibious raid was a flotilla of warships and low-level bomb attacks by the RAF. The raid was launched on Christmas Day 1941, taking the German defenders entirely by surprise. German resistance was stiff, however, and a fierce firefight ensued. Relive the nail-biting action of one of the great raids of World War II in this exciting book, packed with maps and photographs.

In the darkest days of World War II, the British planned a daring airborne operation to capture the secret of the new German radar. Lead by Major John Frost, a company of paratroopers dropped into Bruneval on the French coast, and quickly neutralized a small German garrison. Then began a desperate fight for time as the British tried to dismantle the German radar and evacuate back to England, as ever more German units converged on their position. Using artwork, photographs, and detailed maps, this action-packed narrative puts the reader in the planning room and on the battlefield of one of the greatest raids of World War II.

A concise, illustrated account of Operation Crusader, which proved the ability of the British Army to defeat the Germans in Africa.On 18 November 1941, the British launched Operation Crusader against the Axis positions in Africa. The plan was to bring the armour of the German Afrika Korps to battle and to beat it in open warfare with the now superior strength of Eighth Army, and to relieve the isolated British garrison at Tobruk. Initially meeting with disaster, the British redoubled their efforts, fought through to Tobruk, and pushed back Rommel's Afrika Korps.Written by popular Osprey author, Ken Ford, Operation Crusader tells the story of the British victory that demonstrated their ability to fight head-to-head against the Germans in Africa.

On the night of December 7, 1942, five canoes were launched off the mouth of the Gironde river, each containing a pair of British commandoes tasked with slipping into the port of Bordeaux and destroying as many of the merchant ships as possible. Only two of the canoes made it to the target, but it was enough. Five enemy ships were badly damaged in the attack. It then became a game of cat and mouse for the surviving commandoes in their attempt to get back to Britain. Some of the men made it to Gibraltar; others were caught and executed. Author Ken Ford gives a blow-by-blow account of one of the most daring raids of World War II, which badly upset the flow of material into Germany, and which gave the British public a much needed victory.

The Anglo-American battle for the Geilenkirchen salient in November 1944 was infantry warfare at its worst, and it is described in vivid detail in this new edition of Ken Ford's classic study. The onset of winter saw the Allied advance from the Normandy beaches forced to a halt on Germany's doorstep. The clock had been put back to the days of the Great War - the Allies had arrived at the Siegfried Line and were forced to attack the fortifications from the hell of the trenches. Geilenkirchen was the first battle on German soil to be fought by the British since Minden in 1759. For them, it was just one more battle on the way to Berlin, but for the American 84th Division, it was a first faltering step into war and a bitter lesson in the attrition and savagery of combat. The story is told by the men who were there - the British, the Americans, and the Germans who were fighting desperately for their homeland. Neither side was victorious - both lost more men than they could afford and paid a heavy price in young lives for a few miles of ground.

Illustrated by contemporary photos and specially commissioned maps, this book is a fascinating account of Rommel's greatest victory.Following a lull in the desert war which saw the Germans and British reinforce their armies, Rommel suddenly attacked British fortifications with an assault on the northern sector of the British line near Gazala.Pinning down the British in the north and outflanking the 1st Free French Brigade, Rommel succeeded in encircling the main British positions, trapping them in what became known as 'The Cauldron'. With thousands of British soldiers killed or taken prisoner, this was a devastating defeat for the Allies.Accompanied by contemporary photographs and maps depicting the movement of both armies, Ken Ford provides a masterful study of Rommel, the 'Desert Fox', at the height of his powers as he swept the British army back to the site of their final stand at El Alamein.

A highly illustrated account of the crossings of the great river, which Churchill called 'The last great heave of war'.No invading army had crossed the Rhine since Napoleon's in 1805 and the task fell to Field Marshal Montgomery's 21st Army Group in 1945. Opposing them were the forces of a failing fascist regime, including battalions of old men and boys, strengthened by several formations of crack troops including paratroopers and Panzer Grenadiers.With an elaborate description of the combined Allied attack, second in magnitude only to the Normandy invasion, this book charts the history of the last great set-piece battle of the war that ultimately brought the defeat of Hitler's Nazi regime one step closer.

Featuring full-colour maps and archive photography, this compact volume provides an in-depth account of the battle for the Rhineland in 1945.Known as the last great 'stand-up fight' of the Second World War the battle for the Rhineland was brutal in the extreme. Eisenhower's 'broad front' policy called for the whole of the Rhineland to be taken before pushing his troops across the Rhine and into Germany itself.The Germans opened the Roer dams in a vain bid to temper this massive Allied offensive and this called for a drastic change in tactics. The ensuing battle was characterised by amphibious assaults on the fortified villages of the flooded Rhine lowlands, frontal assaults on the much vaunted Siegfried Line and the grim fighting for the Reichswald Forest.Ken Ford examines in detail the battle that was to be 'the last great killing ground in the west'.